Rick returned to Dallas in 2012 after six years at NPR, where he edited the shows Weekend All Things Considered and Day to Day, and supervised the Digital News operation. Before that, Rick spent 15 years at The Dallas Morning News, after editing stints at what was then the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) in Florida and the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

In addition to the Peabody, he’s collected honors including USC-Getty Arts Journalism Fellowships in 2005 and 2011, a National Headliners Award (2010), a NLGJA Award (2009) and numerous newspaper design awards. He also edited and designed a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature series (1992). A graduate of the University of Maryland, he grew up on a dairy farm in Middletown, Md.

The county's top elected official ignited a political firestorm a week ago when he said the state is refusing to pay what it should for public education, and he accused legislators of blaming local officials for raising property taxes.

Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price is just back from a trip to the nation's capital. She was the only Texan at Monday’s White House ceremony where President Trump unveiled his $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan.

Friday’s the deadline the city of Dallas gave bike-share companies to clean up their acts. The Denton City Council is also considering putting some regulations in place. Six months ago, tens of thousands of rental-share bikes began filling North Texas streets and sidewalks. One of the first companies was Garland-based VBikes.

In this week's State of the Union speech, President Trump delivered a glowing report about the tax bill he just signed, saying roughly three million people received "thousands and thousands of dollars in tax bonuses." However, that's only partially true in North Texas.

One of the most influential education nonprofits in North Texas has a new leader. Byron Sanders, who's 34 and grew up in southern Dallas, got the CEO job this week at Big Thought, a nonprofit focused on merging education and the arts to create a creative path for kids.

Sen. Al Franken's decision to resign and the Dallas Theater Center's firing of Lee Trull are the latest moves in a seemingly nonstop stream of public figures embroiled in sexual harassment controversies.

"The only thing that's new happening here is that people are getting fired for being harassers," SMU law professor Joanna Grossman says. "The harassment's not new."

The new CEO of Dallas County Schools is used to cleaning up financial messes. Six years ago, Alan King calmed things down at Dallas ISD as the interim superintendent. When questionable business deals and mounting debt came to light last year at DCS he stepped in briefly as chief financial officer. Now, he’s been brought on to close the bus agency.

President Trump took another predawn Twitter swipe at a protesting NFL player this morning. That came after a UT-Dallas researcher released a new study showing a deep racial divide among college students about "taking a knee" protests.

After years of growth, international student applications are down 6 percent at the University of Texas at Dallas. This is a big concern for UTD, where one in four undergraduates and half of grad students were born outside the U.S., and it's part of a national trend.

Mary Horn is a ground breaker. She was Denton County's first female tax assessor and the first woman to serve as county judge. And she's lasted longer in the county's top job than anyone else.

This week, the Republican said she's retiring. And whether it's refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, fighting to keep a Confederate memorial or opposing the so-called "bathroom bill," she makes no apologies.

Hyperloop technology promises to shuttle people in capsules from Dallas to Austin in 19 minutes. How? Through passenger pods traveling at up to 700 miles per hour through a low-pressure tube.

Texas emerged as one of 10 winners in the recent Hyperloop One Global Challenge. Steven Duong, a Dallas-based urban designer who helped write that plan, says the Hyperloop is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

The recent debates in Dallas, Denton and Fort Worth over Confederate monuments and places named for Confederate figures puts Cindy Harriman in a unique position. She’s the executive director of the Texas Civil War Museum – and a lifelong member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

A statue of Robert E. Lee was at the center of the white supremacist rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. Cities across the U.S., including Dallas, are now renewing debate on what to do with existing Confederate memorials.

Paul Chabot has a sales pitch for conservatives across the country: Move to Texas. After losing his second bid for Congress in California, he uprooted his family and settled in McKinney. He started a company called Conservative Move to get like-minded folks to do the same.